Re Health Care and the Holocaust

George Baily writes: "Okay, so to inject “references, direct or oblique, to Nazi Germany” in the healthcare debate is to “engage in Holocaust denial” ?

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

George Baily writes: "Okay, so to inject “references, direct or oblique, to Nazi Germany” in the healthcare debate is to “engage in Holocaust denial” ? Huh? So Limbaugh, Beck and Palin are Holocaust deniers. Right... Are you sure Arthur Caplan is really a Ph.D?"

Mr. Baily: Dr. Caplan studied the Holocaust for 30 years - he didn't sit around watching Glenn Beck - and his point did not rest on the injection of Nazi references. Limbaugh, Gingrich and Palin, Dr. Caplan wrote, "reach for preposterous analogies between counseling people about living wills and the forced, involuntary mass murder carried out in the name of racism in concentration camps." If racial "hygiene" as practiced by the Waffen SS is the equivalent of end-of-life counseling, as "conservative" pundits would have it, then the Holocaust was no big deal (it isn't a holocaust if it's no more serious than a lemon session with a government bureaucrat - trivializing the genocide is how Holocaust denial is done at the Institute for Hisorical Review). Only a programmed donut-head would fall for Beck's contrived, far-right (Nazi) bilge, but such a statement does a gross disservice to the millions murdered by the Hitler regime. You don't want to downplay the Holocaust, do you, Baily? Why would you respect anyone who does, esp. Nazi propagandists like Limbaugh, Beck, Palin and Gingrich?

Don't succumb to imaginary fears. Paranoia over health care is for fascist dupes, and you may even be smarter than that.